Attendees at the 2007 (American Nursery and Landscape Association) Legislative Conference visited approximately 250 House and Senate offices representing 40 states. Attendees visited Capitol Hill to lobby Congress for a solution to the labor and immigration crisis and to support specialty crop provisions in the 2007 Farm Bill reauthorization. Research funding and water policy were also addressed.

United States Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez [shown right receiving a plaque "in thanks for his work to secure comprehensive immigration reform"] [1] and Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) [also got his own plaque] both addressed the attendees, encouraging them to maintain their efforts to achieve a necessary solution for securing a viable workforce for our country's agricultural and seasonal industries...

...Confirming the importance of continued lobbying, the very evening the conference concluded Senators Larry Craig and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) engaged in a 40-minute debate on the Senate floor in an attempt to introduce AgJOBS provisions, agricultural worker immigration reform, in response to anti-immigrant language introduced into the Farm Bill...

Instead of sending bricks or toilet brushes, perhaps we should send plaques with sarcastic messages.
[1] 12/16/10 UPDATE: The image in this post appears to have been deleted. It was at:
lawnandlandscape.com/news/images/Gutierrez_Regelbugge2.jpg